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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854928">Human Shield</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee'>Merkwerkee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Being Bruno Hamilton [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Masters of the Metaverse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2019, during his time in the veitnam war</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 18:33:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,195</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Extracting a captured teammate, stealing crucial intel, and blowing up an installation. Oh my!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Being Bruno Hamilton [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Human Shield</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bruno waited patiently for his opening.</p><p>Breaking into the facility had been surprisingly easy. The captain’s intelligence about the location and composition of the convoy had been right on the money, and it had been a simple enough matter for Bruno to hitch a lift as the convoy had slowed to a checkpoint. Tunstall and Weber - Lt. Jack “Pick” Tunstall and Cpl Frederic “Chisel” Weber -  had similar luck, and had secreted themselves into the truck behind him, a fact for which Bruno could only be grateful. Several uncomfortably bumpy and dusty hours later had seen him undetected into a small facility tucked into the mountains near Pha Nang.</p><p>Their teammate, one Cpl Amos “Tongs” Graves, had already been inside for several days; captured alone with incriminating evidence, he’d been taken to this facility precisely as planned and had spent the last few days alternating torture with recon sweeps of the place.  Now, 72 hours later, Bruno and the others were here to extract him and the information Captain Jaxun had wanted, and blow the place sky-high behind them.</p><p>Well, maybe not <em>entirely </em>behind them.</p><p>Bruno’s internal counter hit zero and a heavy thump preceded a screeching alarm. Nothing quite like a plastique explosive padded with some gasoline bottles to really ruin a person’s night. All the main lights in the hallway outside the office he was lurking in went out and for a long minute all was darkness until emergency lighting flickered into existence.</p><p>Time to move.</p><p>Bruno unfolded himself and pulled out a peculiarly bulbous flashlight, sweeping its nearly invisible beams over the room once more before heading out into the hallway. This part of the building was largely unpopulated at this time of night, according to the report-marks done in UV paint by Graves, and Bruno met no-one on his way toward the detention areas even as a rising hubbub could be heard from other parts of the base; Tunstall and Weber had their own light, and a slightly different target.</p><p>Bruno pointed the odd flashlight at the upper corners of the hallways as he went, following the marks Graves had left over the preceding days and nights. The new paint they’d been issued was invisible to the naked eye - or nearly so - and technically a considerable improvement over the more obvious chalk marks they’d used previously, but old habits died hard so the marks were still left in the same out of the way spots the chalk marks had been put in. The downside was the need for the flashlight - much bulkier than a standard issue light, it weighed more than twice as much as one and somehow managed to only hold a twenty-minute charge in its batteries.</p><p>He crossed paths once with Tunstall and Weber on track to their own target. Their mission was at once simpler and more difficult; find and secure the actionable intelligence marked by Graves. Once done, they were to rendezvous outside with Bruno and, if Bruno was successful, Graves.</p><p>A quick nod was all they had time for, and then the other two men were on their way to the offices marked by the UV paint, while Bruno continued to make his way along the trail left for him that would - hopefully - lead him to Graves.</p><p>Running feet echoed down the empty hall, and Bruno ducked into a nearby room, grimacing at the smell of harsh chemical cleaning agents and old blood; not an office, then. The flashlight in his hand flickered alarmingly, and he scowled at it; hopefully the thing wouldn’t die before he got where he was going.</p><p>A quick glance through the small window in the door showed one man an assault rifle skid around the corner, then slow to start checking the doors to either side. Bruno cursed internally, but stowed the odd flashlight in favor of pulling out his knife. Bruno readied himself as the man drew near, and when the guy pushed the door to the room open grabbed him, spun him inside, and stabbed him in the neck with a quick in-and-out that had the man dropping his gun as he uselessly tried to staunch the arterial spray. Bruno reversed the knife and brought the hilt down hard and the guard dropped to bleed out in unconsciousness. Bruno paused, listening for more footsteps - if the guy’d been smart, he’d’ve brought back-up - but heard nothing. Not a smart guy, then.</p><p>As he left the now thoroughly-redecorated room, he could hear gunfire in the distance, the higher sounds of Chinese knock-offs mixing with the deeper staccato of American weapons; apparently their outside team had moved in to engage and distract, which meant Bruno had less time than he’d previously thought. </p><p>Leaping forward, he started running as full-out as the maze of corridors would let him, the strange flashlight now flickering wildly in his hands. Not as fast as his top speed, but decent enough for all the damned corners that he had to both round and check for paint with a light that spent half the time dead and the other half on dim.</p><p>The guards he encountered singly and in pairs - slipshod work, really, but he did set half their base on fire and from the sound of it the second team under Boots was really going to town, so they could possibly be forgiven - went down almost without slowing him. The Ka-Bar in his dominant hand was glistening red in the dim emergency lightning, but Bruno couldn’t stop to wipe it down properly. It was now almost twenty minutes after the first explosion, and if he didn’t get to Graves before thirty he’d have to find him in the dark as the secondary explosives Tunstall and Weber had planted earlier took out the backup generators.</p><p>The trinary explosives would raze the building.</p><p>The walls of the corridors around Bruno were now a flat and dingy sort of white - the color white became when it had been washed too many times with the same bucket of water - and he knew he had to be close. Pulling his Beretta out of its holster he slowed, taking the time to check the corners before he turned them. Better careful than dead, after all. It took him a few minutes more before shouting from around the corner told him he’d hit pay dirt; none of the guards had cursed in English.</p><p>Checking the next corner revealed four guards struggling with a very familiar - and very battered - figure. Bruno took careful aim and managed to shoot two of them before they noticed him and brought their own weapons to bear. He got one more shot off before the last man standing grabbed Graves and put a gun to his head, pulling them both around to face Bruno. Graves grinned.</p><p>“What took you so long, Hammer?”</p><p>Bruno snorted. “Damn flashlight went out.”</p><p>Graves grinned. “Never could trust those tech monkeys. Too damn complicated for their own good.”</p><p>The guard shouted something nearly indecipherable in the general echoing clamor going on in the building and tightened his grip, causing Graves to gurgle and Bruno to tighten his own grip.</p><p>“Hey Hammer.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Don’t miss.”</p><p>Bruno fired.</p>
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